Small

The Prius family of hybrid cars from Toyota is going to get a little bigger as of January when the Japanese automaker will launch a new compact hybrid car for the Japanese market: the 2012 Toyota Aqua. According to Reuters News Service, the Nikkei business daily reports that the compact gasoline...

For many people, the purchase of a fuel efficient car is usually made to save money on driving, as the cost of being a car owner rises further and further. That being the case, why buy an expensive car in the first place, potentially taking years longer to pay off the fuel savings? The good news is...

Mercedes-Benz is betting the time is right for a new range of compact and subcompact vehicles in the U.S. market. Expect to see the first of these, the B-Class wagon, in 2013.

Unlike other compact cars, the gas-mileage story for the 2011 Hyundai Elantra is simple. There's a single engine, a choice of two transmissions--six-speed automatic or six-speed manual--and any Elantra you order will have the same EPA-rated gas mileage. The figures are 29 mpg city, 40 mpg highway...

The 2011 Toyota Corolla is one of the best-selling compact sedans in the U.S. market. But its gas mileage isn't necessarily anything to write home about. The most fuel-efficient model is the one fitted with the 132-horsepower, 1.8-liter engine and a five-speed manual gearbox, a transmission many...

We tend to get a lot of "What car should we buy?" questions at GreenCarReports, and we'll usually respond with a list of questions to narrow down the choices. Recently, though, our high-school friend Sarah Sette in Baltimore sent the following note: We are car shopping, seriously this time. The...

Even in the sixth year of its life, the old 2011 Honda Civic frequently topped the chart in retail sales--meaning individual buyers--in the compact car segment. Now, there's a new 2012 Honda Civic lineup, launched to the world at the New York Auto Show two weeks ago. The version with the highest...

Last week's New York Auto Show had few out-and-out concept cars. One was the Scion FR-S sports coupe, a striking deep red shape that wowed crowds throughout the time we were there. Despite its 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-four engine, it's not inherently on the green end of the scale. But another...

Finally, here's our last video in the series we did on the new 2011 Hyundai Elantra. Since we tested that car a few weeks ago, the compact segment has only heated up. There's a new 2012 Honda Civic, an entirely redesigned all-wheel-drive 2012 Subaru Impreza, and the highly competitive 2011 Chevy...

The 2011 New York Auto Show is kicking off this week, with new compact car entries that include the all-wheel-drive 2012 Subaru Impreza, among others. But a strong new contender this year that's already selling fast is the 2011 Hyundai Elantra, which we recently road-tested over our usual route of...

All we know so far is that Nissan will show a small car at the New York Auto Show, where media days kick off two weeks from tomorrow. But it's highly likely that the car will be an all-new 2012 Nissan Versa. It will be the latest entrant in a brewing battle among new and recently redesigned compact...

Detroit pride is back. Domestic brands are winning quality awards, and matching or beating import labels on consumer satisfaction indices. If you watch television, you've likely seen the spinoffs of the widely discussed, utterly illogical feel-good Chrysler 200 ad featuring Eminem with the...

Car-derived vans are big business in Europe. Pick a subcompact at random and chances are there will be a light delivery van variant. Usually fitted with economical diesel engines, the small size and high economy suits small businesses down to the ground. Electric delivery vehicles have been...

Today's small cars are better than they've ever been, even if few of them are among the EPA's all-time gas mileage champs. And spurred by tighter fuel-economy laws, 40 miles per gallon on the highway is becoming the new target for subcompact and even compact cars. There's just one little problem...

Compact cars are pretty much a known quantity, and hence easy to visualize. Many are headed for 40-mpg highway ratings, and Hyundai recently threw down the gauntlet in saying it would start to report sales of 40-mpg vehicles--and challenged other makers to do the same. Imagine a compact car,and...

To the long list of dead U.S. car brands, you can now add one more: Mercury. The Ford Motor Company announced today that Mercury production would cease by the end of this year. That means that the widely anticipated compact Mercury version of the 2012 Ford Focus--named "Tracer" after the...

General Motors has been stringing out its publicity for upcoming cars--for three years in the case of the electric 2011 Chevrolet Volt--given its recent, ummm, challenges. But now we've finally had a chance to drive its crucially important 2011 Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan, which will hit...

Despite the appealing 2010 Milan Hybrid, the Mercury brand hardly springs to mind when you think "green car". In fact, it hardly springs to mind, period; Ford's upmarket brand has languished for years with little product and even less attention. Now that's going to change. Ford confirmed yesterday...

We're back home from the mind-numbing madness of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, unpacking, sorting press kits (well, these days they're just USB drives), and trying to work out what we thought of it all. This year, there's no question about the best green car there: It was the 2011 Ford Focus compact...

For the first time ever, U.S. automakers are getting ready to sell small cars that go beyond adequate to potentially great. Certainly the styling, specification, and safety equipment of upcoming compacts and subcompacts is a giant step above their predecessors. The latest example is the 2011...